The Portrait Series
by NorthernStar
Summary: Seperate 'portraits' of Jesse, Steve and Mark. WARNING: Alternative universe, disturbing imagery, some very mild slash content.
1. A Portrait of Jesse Travis

Title: A Portrait of Jesse Travis

Series: Portrait vignettes.

Rating: R

Warnings: Alternative universe, disturbing images, first person format.

Summary: One night, two lives…

Notes: I wrote these portraits a while ago and since then they've festered on my hard drive. I wasn't going to post them, but I find I just *can't* delete them. So here they are…sorry…

**A Portrait of Jesse Travis **

_By NorthernStar_

I don't like the darkness and it's so dark in the bedroom. It's dark in the dream too.

The dream…no, its memory. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish between fear and truth, separate what's real from what was induced by terror.

But I know the pain. It's unmistakable.

I hear breathing behind me and while part of me knows who it is, breathing so close and wants to listen, another part shudders and concentrates on the sound of the rain lashing against the window.

There are no footsteps now. There haven't been for many years, but I lie there expecting them all the same. The footsteps that would come nearer, stop, and then begin again. Coming ever closer to me. Sometimes the door would creek, or light from the landing would warn me. Most times, the touching would come from no-where. I would jolt in surprise, even though I'd heard the steps and I knew what would happen.

What had been happening these nights when Mom wasn't alone in her bed.

And neither was I.

The voice would follow the first press of clammy flesh on mine. The words coming soft and coaxing, offering treats in one sentence and issuing threats in the next.

That's when I knew I was going to die. All at once, with hands around my throat, or little by little as he took more and more of my soul with each of these visits.

He'll get me in the end.

I turn onto my front, out of habit, both in the dream and in reality. Complying only to make this shorter, doing so now as the ghosts win yet again.

And I lose.

Weight will press me down soon, and my nose will block with the pillow. If I'm lucky, the blackness will take me before he does.

I'm not lucky.

I rarely ever was. I just went on hoping, night after night.

It hurts when he's in me. He knows it – a sadist at heart, forcing himself to hold back to prolong my pain.

I picture my school but it's snatched away with every stab of agony.

I wake up gasping and the pain fades. It's past, I remind myself. Long past. My mother found another to fill her bed, and my tormentor probably found another to fill his.

"Jesse?"

I close my eyes, curling into myself, feigning sleep. I won't let the only good thing in my life see me like this. I never have.

Steve kisses my back and I swallow down. I want so much to lose myself in his comfort right now, but I can't let him touch me. Not when I'm like this.

He falls asleep soon after and I turn on the light.

I don't like the darkness…

~~End~~


	2. A Portrait of Steve Sloan

Title: A Portrait of Steve Sloan.

Series: Portrait vignettes.

Rating: R

Warnings: Alternative universe, disturbing images, first person format.

Summary: One night, two lives…

**

* * *

**

**A Portrait of Steve Sloan **

By NorthernStar

I listen to the rain, shattering the silence the bedroom. It would rain like this in Vietnam.

I concentrate on better things. More immediate things…Jesse's breathing. Uneven, snuffling. He's dreaming.

He dreams. I remember.

My hand goes almost unconsciously to the tiny scar on my temple. My fingers trace the mark, healed now into the faintest little crescent. Its years old.

I was a boy when it happened, younger even than Jesse is now, in both years and maturity. Fired up on patriotism and the unerring sense of immortality possessed by the young.

A crack of lightening lights the room, just as the flash of the gun firing all those years ago had lit everything I saw. Obliterated the sight and even the smell of the hootch. Sometimes I'll even swear I saw the bullet as it let the barrel.

I close my eyes, force my breathing to restart. The sound of my own heart racing offering a bitter comfort; reminding me, as it had back then, just how fragile life really was.

I had thought I was going to die. But I was wrong. Pain, sharper and deeper than I had ever experienced before had flowered in my skull. My head rung from the shot, blood jetted from the bullet graze. My bones almost seemed to collapse in on themselves and the excrement-covered floor had risen up to meet me. Lying there, I knew I was already dead.

But I lived.

And you know, it's all subjective in the end, and sometimes, like now; it feels as though I wasn't so wrong after all.

I push the thought away, and roll closer to my lover, to my soulmate. I kiss the soft skin at the base of Jesse's neck, breathing in his scent. He smells faintly of sex and musk and the stink of the Vietnamese jungle fades in its wake.

He continues to sleep and dream.

I envy him his peace.

I know I'll never have the same.

~~End~~


	3. A Portrait of Mark Sloan

Title: A Portrait of Steve Sloan.

Series: Portrait vignettes.

Rating: R

Warnings: Alternative universe, disturbing images, first person format.

Summary: One night, two lives…

**

* * *

**

**A Portrait of Steve Sloan **

By NorthernStar

I listen to the rain, shattering the silence the bedroom. It would rain like this in Vietnam.

I concentrate on better things. More immediate things…Jesse's breathing. Uneven, snuffling. He's dreaming.

He dreams. I remember.

My hand goes almost unconsciously to the tiny scar on my temple. My fingers trace the mark, healed now into the faintest little crescent. Its years old.

I was a boy when it happened, younger even than Jesse is now, in both years and maturity. Fired up on patriotism and the unerring sense of immortality possessed by the young.

A crack of lightening lights the room, just as the flash of the gun firing all those years ago had lit everything I saw. Obliterated the sight and even the smell of the hootch. Sometimes I'll even swear I saw the bullet as it let the barrel.

I close my eyes, force my breathing to restart. The sound of my own heart racing offering a bitter comfort; reminding me, as it had back then, just how fragile life really was.

I had thought I was going to die. But I was wrong. Pain, sharper and deeper than I had ever experienced before had flowered in my skull. My head rung from the shot, blood jetted from the bullet graze. My bones almost seemed to collapse in on themselves and the excrement-covered floor had risen up to meet me. Lying there, I knew I was already dead.

But I lived.

And you know, it's all subjective in the end, and sometimes, like now; it feels as though I wasn't so wrong after all.

I push the thought away, and roll closer to my lover, to my soulmate. I kiss the soft skin at the base of Jesse's neck, breathing in his scent. He smells faintly of sex and musk and the stink of the Vietnamese jungle fades in its wake.

He continues to sleep and dream.

I envy him his peace.

I know I'll never have the same.

~~End~~


End file.
